


Control Yourself

by kissesfromkrug



Series: 5 + 1 [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Anger Management, Fluff, M/M, Mistakes, Montreal Canadiens, Pre-Slash, Rookies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 06:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10916550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissesfromkrug/pseuds/kissesfromkrug
Summary: Something about Brendan just pisses Alex off - well, more like a lot of somethings.And no, that doesn't mean he doesn't care about him.or,5 times Alex got angry at Brendan and the 1 time Brendan gave him a taste of his own medicine.





	Control Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever story on AO3, so any feedback would be fantastic! I'm not sure how this website entirely works, either, so...I might have some logistical issues. Point out any typos if you wish. :)  
> None of this is for profit and it's all probably fiction.

•1•

“Shit, sorry,” Gally winces, looking down at the shattered glass. His teammate just stares at the ground, fists clenching by his sides. “You know I didn’t mean it, Chuck, I’m sorry.”

“Fucking hell.”

“I’m just butter fingers, I guess,” Brendan says casually. “As smooth off-ice as I am on it, eh?”

“You are no kind of smooth, fucker, you broke a fucking glass!” Alex makes a frustrated noise as Gally laughs,

“I’ll buy you a new one, dude, it’s fine, it’s no big deal.”

“No, I buy it myself,” he huffs, turning away to get a dust-pan.

“Come on, Chuck, it’s not that b—“

“Shut the fuck up.” Alex disappears around the corner, hoping Brendan will give up.

“Chuck, it’s really not that bad, it’s only a glass.” Why did he _ever_ think Gally would leave him alone?

“Go away.”

“Seriously, Chuck?” Gally asks with a grin, “You’re gonna be miserable just cause of that?” Alex turns around with the broom and dustpan, looking almost murderous.

“Go the fuck away,” he spits in Russian, shoving past him to clean up the mess. Brendan crosses his arms and breathes out heavily through his nose.

“Want me to help?”

“No!”

“Geez, I thought Russians weren’t this emotion—“

“Fuck off.” Gally backs up a bit and puts his hands up.

“If you say so, Russkie.”

•2•

“Oh my god,” Alex groans in frustration as he pokes his head in Gally’s bedroom.

“You want a snack?” Brendan calls from the kitchen.

“I want you to learn how to clean,” Alex mutters, shutting the door behind him and kneeling on the floor. He firmly ignores the fact that it smells pleasantly like Gally. He begins to gather up the clothes on the floor and dumps them in a laundry basket in the corner.

“Chucky! Chuck, where’d ya go?” He ignores his Canadian teammate, hearing footsteps approach. “Ch—what the fuck are you doing?” Alex jerks his head up, standing in the middle of the room with an armful of dirty shirts. “What-what did you do? What did you go through? What did you find?”

“I clean up your clothes because you are mess,” Alex answers warily, taking a step towards the laundry basket. “I did not find anything but gross clothes.”

“Don’t—“ Brendan practically squeaks, lunging towards Alex and dragging him away from the dresser.

“Now what your problem is?” He complains, “I just try to clean.” Gally’s eyes dart between the dresser and Alex several times as he swallows. Alex narrows his eyes as Gally’s cheeks turn pink.

“Please—“ He gulps again. “Please don’t touch my stuff.”

“Fine. You be a mess by yourself.”

“Hey, I’m not a—“

“Shut up.” Alex drops the pile of shirts on the floor and grumbles as he slams the door behind him. “Such a mess.”

•3•

Chucky pulls his socks on in the locker room, listening to Gally loudly chatter on about something apparently hilarious to Beaulieu. “How long you think it’ll take for him to notice?” Gally asks eagerly, and Nate smacks him over the head.

“Shut up, you idiot, you’re so fucking loud.”

“You bet I am.” Alex jerks his head up to look, and Brendan’s making a face at Beau that he probably thinks is sexy. He licks his full, pink lips and winks, but Beau only laughs and swats at him again. Alex can’t seem to look away.

“How many times have people put in noise complaints because of you?” He asks cheekily. Gally laughs and hits him back, his eyes flitting over to Alex.

“You have the world’s hardest pair of socks to put on or something?” Alex looks down at his gray socked feet, mumbling,

“Fuck off.” He grabs his black shoe and shoves it on his left foot, immediately throwing across the room when he feels the wet, almost squishy mess inside it. “What the fuck is that?!” Gally and Beau are laughing their asses off a few stalls away from him, and he looks at his foot to see a foamy white substance. “What the fuck?”

“Gold,” Gally wheezes. “Pure gold!”

“Fuck you,” Alex hisses venomously, padding across the floor and snatching his shoe. He grabs Gally’s towel from his bag and cleans the shoes out to the best of his ability, but Brendan only continues to laugh. “I fucking hate you, Gallagher.” His laugh peters out as he stares at Chucky. In a split second, his confused look turns cheeky.

“Roger that.”

“Who the fuck is _Roger_?” Gally laughs again, shaking his head.

“Jesus, you’ve got a lot to learn.” Alex chucks the towel at his head, grabs his own bag, and storms out of the locker room. “It’s alright, you’re just a rookie, _Galchenyuk_!” Brendan calls after him.

“You don't forget that you are rookie too!” Alex shoots back over his shoulder.

•4•

“Oh my— _Gally_!” Alex exclaims, hands in the air as he stares at the screen. He replays the Maple Leafs' goal over and over until he wants to tear out his hair. “You’re so blind, I can’t fucking believe it!” He clicks the rewind button again just to see Brendan’s frustrated and angry face.

The cameras pan over the bench just as Gally is quite clearly shouting, “Fucking bullshit!” They always seem to be right on time.

“You were losing by 2, and you pass it right across the middle of three of their forwards—why?” Alex questions the screen as the game time ticks down. “Now you’re down by three and—fuck, Gally, you stupid—“ He lets out a frustrated groan as his teammate hops off the bench and immediately is called for a holding the stick penalty.

Alex restrains himself from falling on the floor as he watches his team continue to struggle without him. Within another 30 seconds of penalty-kill time, they’re losing 4-0— _in Toronto_ , no less. And it’s only halfway through the second period.

Alex doesn’t want to blame anyone in particular for the loss, but he has a feeling that him and Price being out has something to do with their poor play. Not to mention Gally’s mistakes throughout the game that have led to at least two, if not three goals by Maple Leafs. The crowd is going insane, but so is Alex, in an entirely different context.

For the remainder of the game, he shouts different insults in all three languages at the television. He curses the goalies, the Leafs, Gally, his injured leg, the referees, his team, the fans—everything and anything he can think of.

At the end of the 5-1 loss, Alex finds himself drinking milk straight from the carton while sitting on the floor, complaining between sips to anyone that will listen. That is, the fish on the tv stand with big eyes and orange scales.

He gets a call from Gally around an hour after the game ends, but he doesn’t answer. Finally, after 20 straight minutes of the phone ringing, Alex jabs the button. To his surprise, it’s FaceTime, and the first thing Gally does is grin smugly at him. “What the fuck you smile about?” He asks. “Why do you smile?”

“Your face.” Alex fiddles around with the phone and gets it so he can see his face in the whole screen.

“Oh.”

“That’s probably the closest to a mustache you could ever get,” Gally chirps weakly, but Alex just sighs heavily. The smile fades, and suddenly Gally looks close to tears. Alex stares at Gally's bowed head for several awkward seconds that soon turn to awkward silent minutes. He feels awful for Gally and the team as a whole, but before he can stop himself, Alex mutters,

“I hate you.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Go to bed, you need sleep more than I need to see you,” he says gruffly, trying not to blatantly accuse his teammate. “Play better next game.” He hangs up without a word from Brendan.

•5•

“Yes, ha!” Gally exclaims, leaping off the couch with a wide grin. “I _knew_ I’d be better than you!”

“No, is just my first time,” Alex lies, fiddling with the video game controller in his hands. “I beat you this time.”

“Sure you will, Russkie.”

“Am not Russian,” Alex insists, trying to change his team from the one Gally had manually set it as. He can’t change the name from _Russkies_ , growling at his teammate.

“Sure you aren’t, Chucky, it’s not like you speak the fucking language or anything,” Gally chortles, leaning further back on the couch and sending a sideways glance at Alex.

“ _I hate you, Gallagher_!” He shouts in Italian, just to mess with Gally’s head.

“Love you too, Chucky!” Alex shakes his head, furiously jabbing at the controller. Gally pushes one button on his own controller, giving Alex a victorious smirk. Alex is left sputtering as the game starts without his consent.

“Fuck you, I’m American, and Americans win,” Alex grins as he launches a snipe past Gally’s goaltender.

“Come on, Chuck, you can’t cheat like that,” he whines as he loses the face-off at the center dot on screen.

“I am just so good. You suck at this game.” Gally groans in frustration, energetically jerking around the controls to steal the puck from Alex.

“I suck?”

“Uh, yes, way much more than me, Canadian,” Alex tries, but instead of arguing, Gally just presses his lips together in a thin line. Gally’s line-mate scores on Alex, who swears softly.

“Now who sucks, Russkie?” He taunts, having shaken off the funky haze.

“I am _not_  a Russkie!” Alex exclaims loudly, losing a defensive zone face-off to Gally. “I am American!”

“No, you’re Belarusian,” Gally corrects, grinning proudly. “Which means you’re Russian. It’s the same thing, really.” Alex makes a high-pitching shrieking noise, and Gally cracks up and nearly drops the controller.

“I am not fucking _Russian_!”

“If you’re not fucking a Russian, who are you fucking?” Alex tosses his controller on the ground and glares at Gally with fire in his eyes.

“Shut. Up.”

•+1•

Alex is perfectly fine being alone. He doesn’t need a “rookie-sitter” to make sure he stays on track, or whatever the hell Patches wants Gally to do. He knows when to work out, how to eat, what to eat, how to speak to fans, when to go club-hopping and when to nurse a beer at home, he knows what he has to do and he knows how to do it.

He doesn’t think any of those facts will ever change the way Gally watches over him like an eagle over its baby. He should be doing that for the crazy Canadian.

“Chucky!” Gally shouts the moment he opens the door. It hits the wall with a bang, and Chucky groans in frustration.

“Wha-at?” He drags out the word.

“Wait, what the fuck are you doing here?” He asks in surprise. “What you are doing here?” Gally appears in the doorway to the living room, looking more upset than Chucky thinks he’s ever seen him outside of hockey.

“I am just—“

“You missed the breakfast!” Gally interrupts furiously, approaching the couch and throwing his coat down next to Alex.

“Breakfast?”

“Uh, the super important team breakfast meeting that Coach told us about last night? He said that if we missed it, we’d be benched the next game! I thought you’d left without me!” Alex swallows hard, only now just remembering the post-game locker-room lecture. He admits that he wasn’t really paying attention, more focused on making sure there was nothing weird in his shoes.

“Um. Oops?”

“‘Oops’? That’s all you fucking have to say for yourself? Coach was furious that you weren’t there—you know we’ll be without you again tomorrow night? It’s the Rangers, Chuck! Do you remember how well we did when you were injured?”

“One win, five losses, two extra-time losses,” Alex mumbles, looking at the fish on the tv stand. It merely swims around and releases bubbles to the surface, but it seems like it knows the tension in the air.

“Chucky, we’re not _good_ without you, you know that! Even Patches and Shawzy showed up, and neither of them are playing tonight!”

“I am sorry, I did not know—“

“Because you weren’t fucking paying attention!” Brendan exclaims. His eyes are wide as he flings his arms around, trying to find the right words. “You let down the guys, you let down Coach, you let down the fans—Galchenyuk, you let me down!”

“Why is this so…so personal to you?” Alex asks. “Why are you this very mad at me?”

Brendan’s eyes nearly bulge at this, and he shouts, “Why am _I_ mad?! Well, what a fan-fucking-tastic question, I’m glad you asked!”

Chucky is stunned into silence, shrinking further into the couch as Brendan yells, “I’m this fucking upset because you’re always mad at me! You’re always on me for this fucking thing or that fucking thing or the other fucking thing and I can’t get a break, everything I do is wrong and you have to fucking correct me about every little stupid mistake!”

Chucky opens his mouth, but Brendan is nowhere near done.

"You don’t like my style of playing, you don’t like what I eat, you don't like how I run my mouth, you don't like that I'm not a pessimistic little shit like you all the time, you don’t agree with my workout plan _even though it’s what the trainers gave me!_  You don’t like anything I do, I’m not good enough for you! You don’t have to tell me, Alex, you show me every fucking day! You don’t give a shit about my feelings or what I could be feeling— _that’s_ why I’m mad! I’m mad because I don’t know what the hell do about it ‘cause you hardly ever wanna talk to me about serious shit ‘cause you hate me and I don’t fucking know why!”

Chucky looks down at his lap as Brendan flops on the couch beside him, making sure not to touch him. He reaches up and rubs his eyes, trying to control his heavy breathing. “I’m serious, Alex, I don’t like being yelled at or criticized. No one does.” He pauses. “No matter how much I blow it off, I…I seriously hate it. I hate it so much.”

A sigh, then a barely audible whisper; “I’m sorry for yelling.”

“I am sorry more,” Alex whispers after a long silence. “I did—I not know—“

“Don’t. Just—don’t speak.” Brendan sighs heavily again, and Alex copies him after a moment. He looks over at his distraught teammate, who has one hand on his thigh and the other arm thrown across his eyes. Biting his lip, Alex has a rush of confidence and reaches over and grabs the hand that’s on his leg. The Canadian jerks his head up and stares at him, both of their faces turning pink.

“I am really very sorry.” Gally nods and doesn’t move his eyes from their interlocked fingers. “I do not hate you. Not at all.” A pause.

“I know.”


End file.
